Between Neighbourhoods

Project idea

The proposed intervention takes place in the neighborhood “El Risco”. It tries to achieve, without losing sight of the place where it is inserted, the difficult mission of connecting two worlds (contiguous) and yet so far. The opportunity of a slit which opens up towards Triana allows the Project to take place. This way, El Risco spills over Triana and shows its neighbourhood personality. It wants to take advantage of its border location, between two worlds, to become a hinge with the vocation of joining both neighborhoods.

Project description

The project offers not only a two-sided visual connection, but it is entrusted the mission of being the link that solves the union of neighborhoods. The concept of “oblique vision” is constituted as the key element that links the project in all its height and length. A succession of layers, starting in ascending order from 0 m (Primero de Mayo) to the + 24.00m level in El Risco, allows, in a dialogue between public and private spaces, the materialization of the project.

It is in this context where the architectural takes place. It is located in two points, which means an opportunity to provide solutions to the detected deficits through a small-scale intervention.

On the one hand, the object of the project is the design of two necessary facilities for the neighborhoo: A Kindergarten and a Cohousing. On the other hand, the intervention intends to make a change in the urban scale in order to qualify the Public Space .


It is built for two opposing and complementary ages, as are the projects proposed, a set of opposites that manifests the specific needs of each age. The street is always an element of relationship between the two, that penetrates them and becomes wide, feeling comfortable.

Urban Strategy
The aim of the project to perform an urban surgery in the neighborhood, whose basic idea is to lift the buildings, including “the void” as another element of the design, which is understood as a key to respond to the problem on three scales:

City Scale
Physical connection and accesibility between both districts is solved and a visualization towards San Bernardo is always possible, even from the highest levels of the intervention. It is possible due to the set of voids designed in the project, that allow to never lose sight of Triana in a game of oblique visuals.

Neighborhood Scale
The void under the pieces is merged into the street, in a game of dilations and contractions, favoring semipublic spaces, shared between the building and the neighborhood.
This operation allows the reactivation of the street in a meeting node, allowed by the new spaces generated under the facilities. The street participates of the interior space while the latter participates of the Street; the threshold expands.

Building Scale
The building participates from the void, which is conceived as the atmosphere where the pieces float, enjoying clear visual connections among each other. In turn, the spaces generated under the buildings are thought as spaces for meetings and activities, in the case of co-housing permanently and in the case of the kindergarten temporarily.


Technical information

Kindergarten
Life as a game, the game of life, life in the kindergarten, learning, admiration of the older kids... Nothing is or nothing must be casual in a conformation that allows the development of the children.
A kindergarten that understands the world of the child from another perspective, different from the one of the adult. A place that is according to their scale, where there are spaces only for them, where playing and learning go hand in hand. It proposes a little neighborhood, a project where the transition neighborhood - little neighborhood - domestic scale are inseparable.
The kindergarten, projected as a group of pieces floating in an empty space that surrounds them, is configured according to a structure that attends to the needs of the smaller ones as well as to the urban strategy.
The classrooms are configured as suspended boxes. Special relevance is given to the visual conection between them, as well as to their spatial organization in a vertical and topological order that relates to the age of the children, improving relationships between them.
The groundfloor level is conceived as a big void to give the neighborhood a new green space and to provide children with a garden that waves under their classrooms, helping their motor and creative development through playful interaction with nature.

Cohousing
Collective life, involvement in the neighborhood life, rooftops as relationship space, the street becomes a part of the domestic area, the domestic area becomes a part of the street as an exterior projection of the dwelling, the living room taken outside, the chairs on the street inviting the neighbors to small talks, traditions of popular districts propitiated by the climate.
The cohousing endorses this way of living outwards, in that dimension close to the private but with a public dimension.
The door left open... it gives up a little of the house and takes, in exchange, a piece of public area.

Covered little spaces at the entrances of the dwellings are proposed, provided with the perfect conditions for their appropiation and colonization. The project aims to qualify this neutral place that belongs to everyone and at the same time to nobody, where people cross almost without seeing each other, where house life sounds distant and humdrum, configuring them as intermediate spaces, spaces of communication that want to be at the same time spaces of relationship, spaces that can be used either for a spontaneous conversation or for a game of dominoes.
The ground floor, conceived as an empty space exempt from building, merges with the street in a symbiosis that lends the amplitude that the latter needs and receives its quality of public space.
The ground floor, in its urban dimension, becomes part of the neighborhood, a hinge between the private and the public, a place of encounter and relationship before the attentive eyes of two diverse worlds; El Risco and Triana.